When mental hospital closes, towns ask what's next

Published
12:00 am CDT, Saturday, August 10, 2013

This photo made June 26, 2013, shows a broken window exposes a decaying room inside the Green Building, once used to house white convalescent patients, at the Central State Mental Hospital campus, in Milledgeville, Ga. The hospital, which originally opened in 1842 as Georgia's first public psychiatric hospital, is nearly shut down under a federal consent decree mandating community centers over institutionalization for the state's mentally ill. Locals are working on redeveloping the 2,800-acre campus in hopes of restoring the region's tax base. (AP Photo/Jaime Henry-White)